


Sniper Dies In This

by phobiaDeficient (TheTriggeredHappy)



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety, Blood and Injury, Depression, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, PTSD, Recreational Drug Use, Suicidal Thoughts, listen this isn’t a happy fic yall, thats basically this fic, thats your warning, ‘what if someone got hanahaki but they didnt WANT to survive’
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 05:16:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18308930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTriggeredHappy/pseuds/phobiaDeficient
Summary: Speeding Bullet Hanahaki AU again except very many times sadder.





	Sniper Dies In This

**Author's Note:**

> [[“what if you made more Hanahaki AU” the discord said, “what if you wrote a fic where you like hurt one of our boys real bad” the discord said, “what if sniper really just straight up fucking died” the discord said.
> 
> alright, here you go then. animals.]]

 

 

 

He thinks, at first, that it’s just the smoking finally taking that final toll on his lungs.

 

He was aware that with hardly breaking thirty and not going through more than a pack of cigarettes a week, it would really be unusual for that to be suddenly biting him in the ass—after all, his voice had only really started going rough on him in the past year or two, and could equally be attributed to the dehydration and lack of talking to others. But it was also important to note that cigarettes weren’t the only thing he ever smoked.

 

Things like vague pain in his chest and light illnesses weren’t unusual either, it’s just that the cough kept persisting. The pain started growing, and the coughs grew more frequent.

 

When he went to Medic finally, during a break towards the middle of the day because it’s started shaking his sightlines, Medic considered him for only a few moments before telling him to report to the infirmary after battle—he could prescribe some medicine to try and both numb and relax his lungs. Medic reminded him, as he often did, that caffeine, or alcohol, or nicotine (or, as he said most pointedly, _any drug_ ) would have side effects over time, and he should try and quit them if possible. Sniper, as he always did, just nodded, but he did report to the infirmary.

 

And Sniper didn’t stop watching the team’s backs in battle, even when his lungs rattled around too much for his age. The only thing he did was start taking fewer shots, trying to get the enemy Spy off his back just a bit. His strikes were more strategic, now. Picking off the Medic just before he might activate a charge, blowing the head off of an Engineer to allow the opening their Soldier needs to take out his nest.

 

He even went so far as to start coordinating aloud with the team, although it wasn’t worth much. It was a new development, and one that few of them really trusted. Nobody would listen to him just yet.

 

Or, _almost_  nobody.

 

Respawn patched him back together at the same time as Scout, who’d been running persistently against the same brick wall of a Heavy and Medic pair for the whole match. He didn’t seem to be that frustrated yet, but it was starting to show in the crease of his eyebrows on his otherwise unmarred, youthful face.

 

Sniper snagged him by the shoulder before he darted out again, and Scout was visibly confused by this new turn of events.

 

“Before—“ Sniper started, and cleared his throat of roughness. “Before you rush out again, give me forty-five seconds to get into place. I’ll cover you on the way to the point. Snag Pyro if you can on the way, and watch out for the Spy, he’s bloodthirsty today.”

 

Scout took a second or two to process the words, then delivered a mock-salute and a cocky smirk. “Forty-five until three, bring the heat. Read ya loud an’ clear, bud.”

 

Sniper only needed thirty seconds to get into position, and used the additional fifteen to scope out the area. He caught a flash of color off to one side, a little burst of flame. The moment Scout ran onto the scene (forty seconds, not forty-five, but it read as amusing rather than irritating for whatever reason) he started taking shots.

 

Boom—and the Medic was headless, and the Heavy was distracted into a half-turn away from the direction Scout was coming in at. Sniper caught sight of two clean shots of the scattergun into the Heavy’s chest before the giant turned back around, and by that time, Sniper was reloaded. Boom—not his cleanest shot, caught through just above the cheekbone due to a sudden pain in his ribs, but the Heavy was downed, and there’s a flash of color again and— _boom_ , Sniper processed the moment after the shot was through that he’d downed the enemy Demoman, and—he barely caught whoever that last person was through the flames, but by the triumph in their Pyro’s gait as they stroll onto the cleared point, he’d guess that it was the Spy, finished off in another two clean shots from the Scout.

 

The younger man was positively beaming, and took a moment to go almost still, giving that mock-salute up towards Sniper’s general direction. It startled him into a chuckle, and the coughing fit that followed took him a few moments to recover from.

 

And when he looked down at the join of his rolled-up sleeve and his scar-marked skin, it was dotted in blood.

 

 

* * *

 

 

At 4:18 in the morning, a time when nobody should be awake, Sniper found most sensations drowned out by a variety of substances, and processed that he should really be more afraid of what was happening to him.

 

Tracing a finger over the grooves marked on his tiny tabletop from years of miscellaneous incidents, head tilted to regard the desert spanning far enough into the distance to trigger vertigo, Sniper doesn’t have difficulty imagining why this doesn’t bother him. The concept of dying hadn’t particularly scared him in years—even before immortality came at the price of five to fifteen seconds out of his day and occasional lingering grogginess, back before miracle science and butterfly knives and gravel when he was just a lone gunman doing the only thing he had ever been any good at and pretending blood didn’t bother him. Dying wasn’t so scary, he figured. There were worse fates. Like being a freak in one’s own birthplace, born and bred in heat and sands that never seemed to want you, among people who would always, always be superior on the basis of things nobody can control. That would be awful, wouldn’t it? He’d rather die than have to live something like that. How very fortunate that he would never have such an experience.

 

He wasn’t high enough if he was still making snarky commentary on existentialism, some part of his brain murmured, the same part that had first begun to ponder whether death was much more than a simple out.

 

He downed liquor.

 

Some part of him—not just his mind, really, something more like his heart perhaps—was relieved whenever he looked down at his sleeve and saw it dotted with blood, these days. Because there were quite a few ways one couldn’t be killed thanks to Mann Co.’s miracle machines. Anything involving dismemberment, either by bullets or blades or explosions or anything else, was off the table. Poisoning and burning were also off the list, meaning that overdose—a glance towards the empty glass—was impossible. The Demoman had tested that on a few occasions over the years when he’d been particularly reckless on a particularly empty stomach particularly quickly. And the Medic, mad scientist as he was, had done more than one experiment that resulted in death by toxin.

 

But decay? The breakdown of the body? They all still aged, albeit slowly. They still had sicknesses that weren’t cured by the transition between life and death then abrupt life again. Maybe this sickness could do it. Maybe it could actually kill him.

 

He drew shapes on the grooves of the table.

 

Some part of him—a voice in his head that sometimes sounded an awful lot like his mother—chastised him for his lifestyle. Eating irregularly (if at all), what he did for _recreation_ , sleeping when it arrived to him and sitting for too long out in the sun. That little voice told him that he would die before forty if he kept this nonsense up. Every cigarette was a year off his life, that little voice told him. And in response, he generally chain smoked until it left him alone.

 

Wasn’t this what he’d wanted to happen, in some ways? Wasn’t this what would’ve happened eventually anyways?

 

He flicked the empty glass lightly, listening with an idle mind to the sound that reverberated through it on contact. He wasn’t even positive that he’s going to die from this, to be fair. He might just suffer for a while and then get better again, and that would just be a damn disappointment, wouldn’t it?

 

He flicked the empty glass.

 

He’d talk to Medic. The man didn’t have nearly such a good idea about how Respawn worked as he liked to pretend, Sniper could tell, and Sniper would just play it off like he wasn’t worried if Medic ended up confirming what he was already fairly sure of. Not tonight—it would look suspicious if he wandered in this late, and compounded with being well on his way to drunk and already at his destination of high, he didn’t feel like he’d be doing himself any favors.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Medic had to be talked down from just cutting him open to see what the problem was, and begrudgingly took x-rays instead. Apparently whatever was happening troubled him enough to make the usually unflappable psychopath go white as a sheet and dismiss him, so Sniper’s hopes were high that it would indeed be lethal.

 

In the meantime, he had to set about scrounging for food in the base, since there was a sudden temporary ban on off-base trips and he was burning through his stock of food rather quickly. Technically the food stashed in the various cabinets in the kitchen was fair game as long as it was labeled, but Sniper knew that as a general rule, it was rather hit or miss in terms of edibility.

 

He was sorting through the cabinet, checking the labels on various bags to make sure things weren’t expired, when one of his teammates stumbled upon him.

 

“Oh, hey!” At the sound of a voice, Sniper jumped, eyes flicking over to the doorway, where Scout had stopped in his tracks and looked almost equally surprised. “What’s up? Dinner’s not for, like, an hour.”

 

“I know,” Sniper said, because he did, relaxing a bit and returning to his task. “Just... stocking up.”

 

“What, runnin’ out of your own food?” Scout asked, just as personable as always, rummaging through the fridge with purpose. “Kinda figured you’d be stocked up like there’s gonna be nuclear fallout or somethin’, survivor guy.”

 

Sniper didn’t reply to that for a second, putting the box on the counter and moving to the next cabinet. After a few seconds he took notice of the pointed silence. “Er, usually am,” he finally said. “Just haven’t gotten a chance to head to town.”

 

“What’s even _in_  town?” Scout asked, shutting the fridge and moving past Sniper to a different cabinet and pulling forth a glass (not actually made of glass considering how often things were broken in the base, instead made of tinted plastic) and pouring himself what appeared to be some kind of juice. “Like, besides the store and the post office?”

 

“Never been?” Sniper asked, glancing over the dates on one of the tins and starting to pull down a few more, clearing his throat as a semi-familiar spike of pain shot through him.

 

“Nah. Hey, maybe next time you go, I could come with,” Scout suggested.

 

Sniper shrugged. “Sure,” he said neutrally.

 

Silence for a second. When Sniper looked over at Scout, he looked shocked, staring openly.

 

“What?” Sniper asked, suddenly a bit self-conscious under the force of those baby-blue eyes.

 

“Uh.” Scout blinked a few times. “Just, usually... usually when I ask stuff like that, you guys say no. Didn’t expect you to agree. I was, uh, I was kinda joking.”

 

Sniper looked back at his meager pile of foodstuffs, clearing his throat again before he spoke. “Oh. Sorry.”

 

“No, nonono! Like, I do wanna go! Just didn’t think you’d actually say yes. Uh. Well, once we’re allowed off-base again, I guess we can make plans or something? Is that cool?”

 

“Yeah, sure,” Sniper said, nodding at his cans. Usually the bans lasted at least a solid month or two, so Sniper was fairly certain he wouldn’t actually still be around to make good on that offer, but it was better than making concrete plans that he knew he couldn’t keep with one of the few teammates that actually made effort with him.

 

“Alright, sweet!” Scout moved to put his juice carton away. “Hey, y’know, I’m the one cookin’ tonight, if you want I can make enough to have leftovers and you can have those if you really don’t wanna eat with everyone.”

 

Sniper spent a few seconds studying the food in front of him. So far he’d managed to find a quarter-box of semi-stale cereal, three dusty cans labeled unhelpfully with just the word “beans”, and about four cans of tuna.

 

“Actually, I think I’ll just eat with you blokes,” he muttered, admitting surrender.

 

“Aw, sweet! Okay!” Sniper could see the way Scout lit up, and wondered if Scout was really taking the decision personally. All at once he was zipping around the kitchen, pulling pots and starting to sift through and take out cans. “I gotta get cookin’ actually, I forgot I’m on dinner. Usually I take breakfast because that’s what I’m really good at but Engie covered for me the other day when I slept in so now I’m returning the favor since he hates dinner duty, probably because he doesn’t wanna stop working long enough to just eat, let alone cook, y’know? Hey, actually, do you know what you want for dinner? Because I seriously have no idea what to cook. I mean, I have a million ideas, like all the time, but I dunno what would be best, and I don’t really care that much, so since you never get to come eat real food with us it’s only fair that you get to choose, right? So, up to you, if you have any suggestions.”

 

Sniper blinked, taken aback by how quickly Scout had gone into motion around him, starting in on his task with no further fanfare even as he launched himself into talking at a speed Sniper could hardly keep up with. It was almost overwhelming just to witness.

 

That feeling jumped up in intensity as Scout, for just a moment, moved into Sniper’s space, leaned past him and grabbed something from a cabinet, all at once directly behind Sniper and—

 

There was the sound of items clattering to the ground and suddenly Sniper was facing Scout, forearm up against his throat, arm reared back and only barely caught in time before he swung. Scout had frozen, eyes wide, and they were both stock-still, Sniper’s chest throbbing with a sudden rapid heartbeat in counterpoint to a stabbing pain in his abdomen that he was too late in realizing wasn’t from a weapon.

 

“Hey, okay,” Scout said quietly, shakily, once he had his bearings. “We’re cool. Same team.”

 

Sniper’s breath was quick in his throat, and he slowly came back into himself, taking stock of his surroundings, noting the distinct tremble in his limbs as his fight reflex urged him to _move go move fight go move NOW_  and he tried his best to push it back down again.

 

“Okay, I’m gonna back up now,” Scout said carefully, glancing at Sniper’s still-curled fist, his face, his rapidly rising and falling chest, “and please don’t, like, kill me.”

 

Sniper didn’t move as Scout slowly took a step back, raising his hands up to either side of his head. He started to relax, slowly, consciously, one muscle at a time.

 

“Alright, no standing right behind you,” Scout noted. “That’s off-limits. Got it. Okay.”

 

“Yeah. Don’t do that,” Sniper agreed once he thought he had his voice under a reasonable amount of control, arms moving back to his sides deliberately, clenching and unclenching his fists. “Not a good idea.”

 

“Right. Sorry.” Scout fidgeted, glanced away. “Uh. Yeah, sorry.” A long, very strained pause. “Can you, uh... I need to get in that cabinet, can you...?”

 

Sniper moved out of the way, and Scout carefully reached in and started pulling out a few boxes, glancing over at Sniper every few moments with obvious nervousness.

 

God. Now he’d gone and almost punched Scout in the face. _Scout_ , of all people. He couldn’t be around the team for even five minutes without lashing out like some feral animal and almost injuring the one teammate who had always been kind to Sniper without making any strange comments or patronizing suggestions, just treated Sniper like a friend without asking anything of Sniper in return, including his presence. The first regular conversation Sniper had been a part of in god knew how long and he nearly knocked out the single teammate that absolutely didn’t deserve it.

 

He was about to say something himself when Scout spoke.

 

“I’m sorry I freaked you out,” he suddenly blurted, earnest and apparently bursting with regret, or at least very good at faking it. “I didn’t mean to, I swear.”

 

“It’s... it’s fine,” Sniper said, a little surprised. “I ought to be the one apologizing, shouldn’t I? Nearly cold clocked you.”

 

“I mean, considering who you gotta deal with the most out on the field, I, I should’a known better and I’m sorry.” Scout punctuated his words by putting a pot on the stovetop with a firm _clang_ , followed by only a short silence. “Hey, do you still wanna come eat with everyone? Or, did I fuck it up?”

 

“I...” Sniper took a moment to steady himself. “Well... you said an hour?”

 

“Yeah. Like...” Scout checked the clock on the wall, then looked at the readout on the stove for a few moments. “Yeah, like an hour.”

 

“I’ll... I’ll just, I’ll be back. Later, for dinner. Once I’ve... cooled off.” Sniper was already berating himself internally for that little screw-up when it was pushed from his mind in a single, effective movement by Scout.

 

A mock salute, paired with a wide, genuine smile. “Awesome! See you then!” he said, bright and...

 

Sniper nodded and stepped out, chest aching.

 

Sniper managed to get all the way back to his place of residence before he finally gave in and fell into a coughing fit, stifling the noise and any possible spray of blood with a towel. The red spots he ended up with by the end of it were significant. Even more significant was the presence of something that very decidedly wasn’t blood.

 

A single flower petal, red speckles of blood against a gentle white.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Medic tracked him down a few days later, right after battle before he could sulk off like he usually did, the doctor still bloodied and sweaty and dusty and clearly agitated. He attempted to start a conversation with Sniper, asking if anything else _odd_  had been happening, but Sniper quipped out a no and stalked off before Medic could say anything else on the matter.

 

He’d seemed very frazzled. Sniper was almost positive that he was dying, now.

 

He started leaving after battle even more quickly, and showing up very shortly before he was supposed to be in Resupply to prevent the doctor talking to him before matches as well. On more than one occasion, Medic came knocking at his actual camper, demanding entry with no small amount of indignance before finally storming off again.

 

The third day in a row that this happened, Sniper drove the van another solid mile out from base. There was no further knocking for a few days.

 

Then just before sunset one evening, when the sky was just starting to darken, there was banging on his door again.

 

Sniper had been half-dozed when the knocking came. He’d gotten drastically more tired in the wake of the illness, nearly falling asleep during lulls in battle at times. His regular insomnia was starting to strike less harshly, leaving him to half-doze rather than outright sit wide awake, but that might also have had something to do with the fact that he was also drinking a good bit before he went to sleep each night to try and take the edge off the pain.

 

The flower petals kept accumulating, proving themselves not to be a figment of his imagination sometime around when a small pile formed. He wound up dumping them outside, letting the bloodstained fragments flutter out the door like some kind of macabre confetti and hoping that they’d scatter to the wind.

 

Then the knocking came again. Sniper felt something in his chest snap. Some combination of being freshly woken up, and his nerves worn thin by the constant pain, and frustration.

 

He stormed to the door, flinging it open. “ _What_  do you—“ he started to snap, voice raised and rasping, when he realized three things.

 

One, the flower petals had not blown away with the wind, and undoubtedly give him away if Medic was the one who came knocking.

 

Two, it was not Medic at his door this time.

 

Three, he was just in a pair of loose-fitting boxers and sandals.

 

“Uh,” Scout said, clearly taken aback by both Sniper’s anger and state of undress. “Is this... a bad time?”

 

Sniper forced himself to relax, unclenching his fists, eyes locking on the ground behind Scout. “No. It’s not,” he said, voice still hoarse. He cleared his throat lightly, which helped. “Did you need somethin’?”

 

“Uh.” Scout’s eyes flicked from Sniper’s face (which felt a bit warm) to his arms, his chest, and back to his face again. “The Doc asked me to—“

 

Sniper went to shut the door.

 

“Wait wait wait—!” Scout had his foot and the better part of his shoulder through the door before Sniper could get it closed. “He asked me to tell you, he thinks he’s figured out what might, uh, be wrong? And he wants to talk to you? But I just—only reason I’m the one that got sent over is because I was wonderin’ if you were doin’ okay an’ asked him about it, and, I just, _are_  you? Doin’ okay?”

 

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Sniper asked, shoulder still against the door.

 

“You’ve been _ghostin’_  on us, man! Only show up to fight, never even around the base anymore—I thought you said you didn’t have nothin’ to eat out here!”

 

“I got stuff from the kitchen late at night to avoid the Doc,” Sniper said, which was true, but not the full story. To be honest, he hadn’t been eating much, the general pain and the cocktail of things he used to try and dull that pain keeping him fairly nauseous. Even then, he felt his stomach flipping as a harsh pang went through him. “An’ since when do _you_  go checkin’ up on folks?”

 

“Since one’a my teammates starts straight up disappearing an’ lockin’ himself away from everyone to go rot in a van! I—can we continue this discussion without the door? I can’t feel my arm.”

 

Sniper sighed, finally relenting and opening the door again, glaring at Scout for being so persistent. His head was swimming, enough so that he moved to lean on the doorframe, trying to play it off as casual. “There. Door’s open,” he said dryly. “Now, since when do you care?”

 

Scout actually looked a little offended. “Dude, I, I know you ain’t exactly a socialite, but... c’mon, don’t you think it’s fair that I get a little worried when one’a you guys starts showin’ up to fight lookin’ like you’ve already got shot? You’re always wicked late, leave right after the fight’s up, an’ in the meantime you lock yourself out away from everything an’ you—I’m not an idiot, I got two whole workin’ eyes, you’ve clearly been, like, either  _sick_  or...”

 

Sniper huffed. “Yeah, I get all that, but why would you care?” he asked. “If it was someone else I’d get it, but I’m just...”

 

He wasn’t sure how to end that sentence. Scout just frowned at him.

 

“Mate, look, I appreciate it,” he finally conceded. “Real kind’a you to come out here an’ ask how I’m doin’. But really, haven’t you got somethin’ better to do than worry after the hermit? Hardly seems worth the trouble.”

 

Scout pulled his cap off, ran a hand through his hair, glared down off to one side of Sniper. “Man, you haven’t seen the way the Doc is wiggin’ out. Got all of us worried sick, he don’t blink at seein’ people’s legs gone, so we figure whatever’s goin’ on has gotta be pretty serious. I think he figures you’re like, _dyin’_  or somethin’,” Scout said, the last part trailing into a mumble.

 

 _Good_ , Sniper wanted to say.

 

Then Scout blinked, glancing down, then behind him at the ground. “Wait, have you been like, _gardening_  or somethin’?” he asked, surprised, gaze flicking over the flower petals littering the ground.

 

Sniper looked at them too. “No.”

 

“Okay. Because I was gonna ask, I dunno how the hell you got—shit, what are these?” Before Sniper could stop him, Scout bent and scooped up some of the fragments. “These are like, flowers. And this is the desert. You’d have to be like, a magician. Where did these even _come_  from? And what are they?”

 

“Long story, an’ I’m not sure. I know as much as you do, mate. Just keep turnin’ up.” A little white lie, and that was all. He didn’t need Scout thinking he was any more of an insane person than he already did.

 

“They look, like, familiar. Where have I seen these? They seriously look familiar.” Scout stared at the petals for a few seconds, the let them flutter back to the ground. “Eh. Whatever. I’ll remember later. Uh, anyways. For real, you should go talk to the Doc before he has like, a heart attack.”

 

Sniper wanted to dismiss the thought. Wanted to shrug it off altogether, or outright refuse. Wanted to say that he didn’t care, and wanted to tell Scout to pass along the fact that he didn’t care, and to tell Scout to tell Medic to get off his back already.

 

But there was something earnest in Scout’s gaze. The slightest crease between his eyebrows, the slightest curve of his lip downward, betraying a very real worry under the surface of Scout’s general casual and lightly-joking demeanor.

 

Something about that worry made Sniper’s chest hurt again, but not in the same way as before.

 

“Fine,” he heard himself saying.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sniper didn’t talk much during the little meeting with Medic. Mostly just nodded or shook his head, trying to absorb and process what Medic was talking about. Admittedly, he didn’t understand much, because it really didn’t make sense. Something about a parasite, something about a plant, and something about emotional turmoil. The doctor took another x-ray, and returned, and was quiet for a little while, then asked Sniper if anything... _strange_  had been happening. Sniper shrugged. Medic outright asked if he’d been coughing up flower petals. Sniper didn’t speak for a few moments, then nodded.

 

Medic informed him that it was extremely likely that he would be dead within two days. At best, unless the issue was resolved, he would have until Sunday.

 

Sniper absorbed the information, feeling an intense wave of relief at the news. No more aches. No more coughing and waking up half-choked. No more sleeping every hour of the day that he wasn’t fighting. And besides that, no more of his own head. No more of the fear, the twitchiness, the aches that ran deeper than just his chest. The... the...

 

“But there might be a cure,” Medic said slowly.

 

Sniper inclined his head just slightly.

 

Medic fidgeted with the x-ray. “Have you been feeling... particularly attached to any of the rest of the team?” he asked.

 

Sniper’s eyebrows rose.

 

“To put it simply, the plant feeds on strong emotions, positive or negative, and most often is attributed with... well, the desire for a romantic relationship with a specific individual. It does not seem impossible to me that the parasite might be feeding on your... what is the word? Ah, pre-existing condition, your, your general emotional instability—“

 

“Excuse me?” Sniper asked, a bit sharply, eyebrows furrowing, indignation rising in his chest.

 

Medic shot him a look, seemed vaguely irritated with him. “Are we really going to pretend your emotional health hasn’t been a factor in all of this?”

 

Sniper glared at him. Medic ignored it and kept talking.

 

“Regardless, while it’s _possible_  that the parasite is feeding on your general emotional health, since it is indeed highly abnormal, this would be among the first documented cases of this happening. But there is a possible cure if it’s not that. If it’s instead based on romantic feelings, by simply, er, _resolving_  the romantic pressures, a cure would be—“

 

Sniper stood. “Right. No,” he said.

 

Medic looked at him, puzzled. “What?”

 

“No. That’s not it. It’s the first thing.”

 

Medic leaned on a different cot, pursing his lips. He gave Sniper a once-over, like he was observing a particularly peculiar specimen. Silence for a moment before he finally spoke. “Herr Sniper, why do I get the feeling that you don’t _want_  to be cured?” he finally asked.

 

Ice water in his veins. “I’d love to be cured and fixed up, but if it’s the first thing you said, it’s impossible to fix,” Sniper shrugged.

 

“There’s a possible surgery,” Medic said flatly, tension growing. “To remove the parasite. Possible survival rate of—“

 

“Doc, all due respect,” Sniper cut in, “I’d rather just go get some peace an’ quiet to think this over. Y’know, before I make any decisions.”

 

Medic sighed, shaking his head to himself. “Alright. Fine. Go die, see if I care. No blood on my hands. I tried,” Medic said, arms half-raised in mock surrender, seeing right through Sniper’s escape attempt.

 

“Thanks for the permission,” Sniper said dryly, and left the infirmary.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He spent the rest of the night and well into the next day doing god knew what, far beyond inebriated and well into Fucked Up. He very briefly took the time to sort through his things, see if there was anything important that he’d been putting off doing. There wasn’t. The time passed slowly, but all at once. The knowledge that he didn’t have long left should’ve panicked him. It didn’t.

 

Then sometime around sunset, sober and exhausted, he headed to the side of the camper facing away from the base and started a campfire, leaning against the side of the van once it was well and going. He’d always liked campfires as a kid, reminded him of camping and general good memories.

 

He crossed his arms, stared out at the horizon, and began to wait. Until Sunday, if he was lucky. That’s what Medic had told him. And the pain had mounted past agony and into a numbness as his mind tried to shelter him from the brunt of it, and he couldn’t seem to get quite enough air into his lungs.

 

He felt tired. Bone-deep, heavy-headed, throbbing temples and stabbing behind the eyes, hardly sitting right kinds of tired. He felt like he was just going to sink into the ground.

 

He heard the sound of shoes crunching on the sandy, gravelly ground, and the tired disappeared momentarily, replaced by hard-won survival instincts, and he jumped to his feet, head whipping around before he realized what he was doing, and all at once he felt quite silly.

 

He heard knocking at the door of the camper, and he swallowed hard to dislodge whatever was in his throat. “I’m around back,” he called.

 

And who else could it be? “Hey!” Scout said cheerfully, expression only sinking slightly as he took in Sniper’s appearance. “Uh, what’s up?”

 

Sniper shrugged, leaning his back against the camper again as spots danced before his eyes.

 

“Hey, I came back to just, like—so you know those flowers? The ones that you said keep showin’ up?” Scout pulled a book—not even a book really, more a notebook—from his bag. “I think I know what they are! _Knew_  I knew ‘em from somewhere!”

 

“Yeah?” Sniper glanced over the notebook as Scout moved to stand next to him, leaning similarly against the wall, flipping through the pages.

 

“Yeah! They’re poppies! When I was a kid we—uh, my family—we lived in an apartment, right? So no garden space or nothin’, but we had this window box an’ my Ma always put poppies in there! Easy to grow or somethin’. We had red ones though, not white ones. Uh, usually.” Scout finished flipping through the notebook and pulled out a sketch of a flower. “I borrowed a book from Cyclops, about like plants ‘n shit, got a sketch of it! See? Same petals!”

 

Sniper blinked. “Huh. I s’pose that’s that mystery solved, then,” he said, tilting the sketch towards him and looking it over. “Hold on, there’s a whole one out with the rest, maybe it’s...”

 

Sniper walked around the side of the camper to the pile of petals and found a semi-intact flower among them, taking it back over and comparing it to the drawing in Scout’s hand carefully.

 

“Yep. That’s that,” Sniper conceded, tossing the flower into the fire after a moment’s consideration. Scout beamed, the notebook being stowed back in his bag again. Sniper was silent. He wasn’t sure what else there was to say.

 

For whatever reason, “sorry” came to mind.

 

Scout had gone out of his way to figure this out for him. And, hell, before that he’d gone out of his way to check up on Sniper, and before that to invite and include him into team activities, and before _that_  to just... be considerate towards him.

 

Guilt. Scout had wasted all that time and emotional energy on Sniper, and now Sniper was going to die. Scout didn’t deserve that.

 

“Why...” Sniper began to ask and realized too late that he was speaking aloud.

 

But Scout had already perked up and was looking at him with those baby blue eyes of his (a vibrancy that Sniper was admittedly a bit jealous of), so he might as well finish the thought.

 

“Why are you being so nice to me?” Sniper settled on.

 

Scout shrugged. “I mean, why wouldn’t I be?” he asked in return. “You’re pretty cool, don’t rag on me half as much as the other guys, if anything it’s just me makin’ up for lost time, yeah?”

 

Sniper shook his head to himself, having to break eye contact with Scout.

 

“Hey,” Scout said after a second. “Is everything okay?”

 

Sniper nodded woodenly. “M’fine. Just sick is all,” he replied, still looking away.

 

Scout half-sighed. “No, I meant... like, other than that. Like for real. Are you _doin’_  okay? You seem, like... I dunno. Weird vibes.”

 

Sniper didn’t know if he could articulate it. “Like I said. Just sick, is all.”

 

Scout scuffed his shoes on the ground. The fire crackled. “Y’know, when I was a kid I’d go visit my grandad—we called ‘im Pops—in this like, old people community thing. There were a lot’a World War I guys in there. Some of ‘em got shipped out and came back all bent up because’a the war, the fightin’. Took some of ‘em a long time to figure out that it’d even happened, an’ they didn’t notice until they got home and everything looked different.” Scout paused, and Sniper didn’t need to turn his head to know that Scout was looking at him. “Is it like that? You’re gettin’ all bent up? Because... I don’t wanna name names, because I’m not, like, an asshole, but you wouldn’t be the only guy on the base like that.”

 

Sniper shook his head. “No, s’not... it’s a bit different. A general sort of...” He went to gesture, made an attempt, and quit halfway through.

 

“Yeah, I... seriously, you wouldn’t be the only guy on the base like that,” Scout repeated, a bit more insistently.

 

“Which would mean what for me?” Sniper asked, some impatience seeping into his tone.

 

“I dunno, I just... I thought it might help? I just wanted to help,” Scout said defensively.

 

 _You already_  do _help,_  Sniper only barely managed to catch before saying aloud, and realized it was true.

 

It was. It didn’t happen much, but if there was ever anyone who caught Sniper in the act of skulking about the base like a ghost, it was always Scout. And although initially Scout had reacted extremely nervously to his presence (much in the same way he’d apparently been to Pyro before knowing them a bit better, and Medic, and to some degree Heavy), he’d very quickly taken to... being nice. Kind. Starting a conversation with him, however brief, and seeming genuinely happy to be talking to him, like it was some sort of lovely unexpected surprise instead of walking in on a shambling scarecrow of a man attempting and apparently failing to hide from everyone.

 

And somehow it was...

 

Sniper looked over at Scout, who was picking at his grip tape and sulking after being told off. And he realized that this scrawny young man somehow, somehow, managed the miracle task of being a net positive of an interaction, leaving Sniper feeling better for having had a conversation, making him feel nearly at ease. He realized he _liked_  talking to Scout. And that felt selfish, but he felt that he was perhaps allowed some selfishness in these, his final hours.

 

Scout looked up at him finally, pout falling away as he blinked, standing a bit taller, posture straightening out as he realized he was being observed.

 

“You already _do_  help,” Sniper finally said.

 

It took a second for Scout to connect the dots on what Sniper was referring to, then he suddenly went sheepish, looking away again. “I mean, I try. That’s, like, what I’m here for. What I’m good at,” Scout said, feigning a bit of confidence.

 

“Really, you do. You’re... you’re a good person, Scout,” Sniper said quietly, and meant it. Scout looked up at him with a few emotions on his face. Pride, relief, curiosity.

 

Sniper knew, in his mind, that there were a few things that were very true. That certain things about him were indescribably taboo. That he could almost certainly be fired, if not killed, should those same certain things come to light about him. That what he so badly wanted to do was incredibly selfish, and would in one fell swoop expose that one singular extremely taboo thing. That he was being so very incredibly selfish for even _wanting_ to do what he was thinking of. He shouldn't. He really, really shouldn't.

 

But if for just a moment it could make him maybe feel happy—in a way that the scotch and cigarettes and weed and even harder drugs couldn’t—here in his final day, he was willing to be selfish.

 

That said, he was slow. He made it clear what he was doing.

 

He stood up fully, turned his body to face Scout. Moved the half-step forward to close the meager distance between them. Scout stood up from where he’d leaned against the camper, giving Sniper a quick, confused up-and-down. Sniper reached hands up and cupped Scout’s face, tipped it up, tilted his head, and carefully leaned in.

 

The briefest, smallest little brush of lips, giving Scout a chance to do something, anything. To push him away. To hit him. To slap him. To pull back and start yelling. He did none of those things, he’d just gone still, but not tense. Then Sniper kissed him.

 

...

 

He—

 

...

 

He was right. It felt... it felt good. It felt very much good. His heart was swelling, his eyes squeezing shut that slight bit more tightly. He did feel happy. He felt... he...

 

Parting for only a moment to get his breath back as it mysteriously disappeared from his lungs, then he was back in again, kissing with slightly more intent. Scout was gripping at his shirt now, and, and it wasn’t just Sniper kissing Scout as it had been for that initial kiss of indeterminate length, it was Sniper and Scout kissing, it was a shaky exhale through Scout’s nose, it was the quickly-fading taste of bubblegum mingling with the smell of burning wood in the air, it was the way Scout tilted just slightly up onto his toes and the way one of Sniper’s hands fell to cup his hip, it was the fluttering pulse in his own chest, it was a tingling in his fingertips, it was a full-body ache and dizziness in such a wildly different way than before because now instead of feeling horrible it felt so very impossibly good, it was—

 

Sniper was suddenly and without warning shoved back.

 

He didn’t get his bearings right away. By the time he’d blinked his eyes open and re-oriented himself, Scout had scrambled back, heels skittering against the sand and gravel, eyes wide and entire body tense, fearful.

 

And only a brief moment where Scout stared at him with those same wide eyes, and then Scout was off, running away, away from Sniper, away towards the base again.

 

Sniper was a dead man. Inevitably from a sickness, undoubtedly from consequences, and metaphorically from what felt like his heart breaking in two.

 

 _Well, what did you_ think _was going to happen?_  he chided himself.

 

He waited for the poppies to consume his last breath to make this death literal.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The sun set and the stars came out. Sniper waited.

 

The fire fell from a crackling heat to a sear to a smoulder to a tiny glow. Sniper waited.

 

The stars travelled across the sky at a leisurely, imperceptible pace. Sniper didn’t cough, didn’t move. Just blinked, and took light, shaky breaths, one after the other, and leaned his back against the cold metal until it sank through his shirt and into his back, and he waited.

 

Then all at once, an eternity later, the sky started to turn from midnight black into navy, washing out further with the unmeasured passage of time.

 

The moment Sniper could see some amount, he looked down at his own hands.

 

“How aren’t I dead yet?” he asked himself, puzzled, throat tight and dry.

 

The sun was starting to peek over the horizon when he heard sand crunching under someone’s feet not far away. They stopped somewhere just out of sight, and for a long few moments Sniper thought he might’ve imagined the noise.

 

A knock at the door around the corner from him.

 

“I’m around back,” Sniper called hoarsely.

 

And the pieces were reset, Scout stepping around the corner, Sniper before the fire.

 

Except not completely. Scout was in what looked like his equivalent to pajamas, a loose t-shirt and a pair of running shorts and tennis shoes without socks. He didn’t even have his hat on. And he looked about fifty times more nervous than he did before, immediately fidgeting and breaking eye contact the moment he came into view.

 

“Uh,” Scout said. “Hey.”

 

Sniper’s throat suddenly felt even tighter than before. “Hey.”

 

“Uh.” Scout scratched at his forearm, looking very intently at where the campfire had been. “You, uh... you... been out here a while?”

 

Sniper looked at the campfire as well. “All night,” he said simply.

 

“...Oh.” His voice was unsteady. “Right.”

 

Sniper looked over and saw Scout’s expression. It was an intense sort of guilt, warping his expression into something pained. “Did you need something?” Sniper finally asked, unable to make it sound natural or casual.

 

“Yeah. I... I needed to, to apologize,” Scout said, as an exhale.

 

“No, you don’t,” Sniper replied without hesitating. “You didn’t do anythin’ wrong, I... I shouldn’t’ve—“

 

“But you did,” Scout cut in.

 

“But I shouldn’t’ve,” Sniper insisted, voice threatening to crack as it rose.

 

“But you _did_ , and I, I freaked out an’ ran away,” Scout insisted. “And I’m sorry.”

 

Sniper shook his head, eyes returning to the campfire. A pause, Scout shifting on his feet.

 

“Did you mean it?” Scout suddenly asked.

 

Sniper frowned, looking back over at him. “Hmm?”

 

“Did you mean it? When you...” Scout gestured towards his own face, which, in the growing light, Sniper was starting to realize was very red.

 

Sniper didn’t reply for a moment. Then another, and another. He just looked at Scout, who was looking increasingly nervous. “Yes,” he finally said, voice almost too quiet to leave his throat, accompanied by a little nod. “I did.”

 

Scout nodded as if in confirmation, moving to shove his hands in his pockets before realizing he didn’t have pockets. Instead he fidgeted with his hands. “Okay,” he said, nodding again. “Yeah. Okay.”

 

Sniper’s eyebrows furrowed.

 

Scout’s head dipped down as he scuffed the toe of his shoe on the ground idly. “Um. The, the ban on... the, we’re allowed to go into town again. Word came in, uh, last night.”

 

Sniper didn’t say anything, waiting for further elaboration.

 

“Um. Did you... still wanna, wanna take me to see town? Show me around an’ all?” Scout asked hopefully.

 

Sniper’s eyebrows shot up, and that icy little space in his heart, of fear, of panic, of something else, started to thaw. It took him a long moment to find any words. “You... so you...”

 

“I, I mean, I just, wanted to see if you...” Scout was struggling for words as well, which was new for him. “Like, I didn’t wanna assume or nothin’, and it’s the weekend so we still have time an’ all, and I... need to, make it up to you for the, the runnin’ away, I just...”

 

“Scout,” Sniper said softly, and Scout looked up at him. “Are you sayin’...”

 

“I just, I think it’s... I, I dunno. I don’t know why I ran, I didn’t wanna run, I just, I panicked, I...” He glanced away for a second, then looked back up. “Are you mad?”

 

Sniper thought about it. “No, I... to be honest, I thought you’d run off to tell the team about...” he trailed.

 

Scout shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t,” he said, suddenly much more serious than before.

 

Sniper looked back at the remains of the fire, thinking hard.

 

“So is that... a yes? Do you wanna head into town today?” Scout asked. “With me?”

 

Sniper took a shaky, shallow breath.

 

“Like, as a date?” Scout finally added, quiet now.

 

And clearly Scout was prepared to keep rambling, but then, in that moment, something happened.

 

Sniper wouldn’t really know how to explain it, even later on. All he knew was that he went to reply, and then his chest was in incredible pain, and then he was experiencing a lot of things, and then when he next felt coherent enough to try and string a sentence together, there was a plant among the charred remains of the campfire, the sun now up above the horizon.

 

He processed, vaguely, that Scout had been present the entire time, panicked, but trying his best to soothe and calm Sniper despite a distinct note of panic there in his own tone. As he coughed, retched, gagged, heaved, shuddering and trembling and weak, breaking out into a cold sweat and eyes stinging with involuntary tears and spots dancing in his vision as he tried his damndest not to black out, Scout was there.

 

He didn’t know how he knew, but as he looked down at the remains of the plant there in the fire pit, he understood a few things.

 

Firstly, that he was looking at the entirety of it. It was gone, out of his lungs, and all of his other guts as well.

 

Secondly, that the plant being entirely out of his body meant almost certainly that he was not, in fact, going to die. He knew what internal bleeding felt like, and while he did feel raw, did feel like someone had taken steel wool to his innards, he knew that he wasn’t hemorrhaging. He was going to live.

 

Thirdly, he was not particularly upset about the fact that he was going to survive, which he found especially peculiar.

 

Finally, that Scout was almost definitely the cause of this miraculous situation—and this was one he was especially confused about, but did feel deep down in his chest. Emotionally, at least. Physically, again, he did just feel like he was a victim of internal steel wool.

 

He turned watery eyes to look at the baseball player, runner, Bostonian, and hired killer. Scout looked... confused, but relieved to see that the coughing had stopped, as well.

 

“Okay, so, I’m not gonna pretend to know what exactly the hell just happened,” Scout said when it was clear that the coughing fit was over. “But... that wasn’t, uh, that’s not a no to the date thing, right?”

 

Sniper managed a laugh through ruined vocal chords, eyes falling. “No, that wasn’t a no,” Sniper confirmed, even though it hurt to speak. “It’s a date.”

 

Maybe he would be back to feeling bad later. Maybe some other illness would come along. Maybe any number of things could happen that he didn't expect.

 

He couldn’t think about that. He had a flower bush to burn and a date to get ready for.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [[oh, you didn’t check the date this was posted, did you?
> 
> april fool’s.]]


End file.
